If I look back at my 2020 goals, I have mixed feelings: https://www.winterwolves.net/blog/2020/01/new-year-goals-3/
I mean, yes I finished Planet Stronghold 2 and Volleyball Heaven, and I’m at good point with Summer In Trigue, but I didn’t release that third game I was hoping to. Of course 2020 wasn’t exactly a normal year, and in the end at least I managed to run my first successful Kickstarter campaign for Tales From The Under-Realm: Hazel.
My goal from now on, will be to release each year a couple of “standard sized” (not my standards! industry standards so around 70k words) or less visual novels and maybe a bigger game (not necessarily a RPG though) every 2 years. So let’s see what’s the plan for 2021:
Tales From The Under-Realm: Hazel – this one for sure should be in beta this month and likely out Q1. Since I did a Kickstarter, it will be my main priority early this year.
Summer In Trigue – this one should be out this year as well, since we’re at very good point. Not sure exactly when (I might take a break after Hazel release) but it will be out.
Curse Of Mantras – even if I didn’t manage to do it in the past year, I have at least storyboarded most of the game plot. And it wasn’t an easy task, since I was so foolish to include 10 love interests (plus the two main protagonists Ace and Lily, so a total of 12 backstories to write). And if that wasn’t enough, even a complex card battle gameplay which will be similar to PSCD (but different under many aspects like resources allocation and cards selection). I think this time a beta this year should be possible. I might need to do a crowdfunding campaign for this one since it has really drained me (both of money and time lol) and it’s an example of one of the games I’ll never make anymore (too big!!)
Tales Of Aravorn – An Eleven Marriage. That’s the title of the first new game with Elenor/Saren. Of course, if this year I do Curse Of Mantras, I surely won’t be able to do a RPG. But I’m putting this here since who knows, I might finish this one first? Yes, a RPG is harder than a card game, however this one has a smaller party and “only” 4 love interests. Basically, depending how things go, I’ll decide what game to finish first. But if I don’t finish it this year, it will likely be out next.
Secret games – I have 2-3 smaller projects going on, but as you know I’m not talking about them publicly until I’m sure they’ll be out in 2-3 months max. So I cannot talk about any of them yet, however I hope that I’ll manage to finish one of them.
Conclusions
I know what you’re probably thinking! That there are too many games. Yes, they are haha. However only Curse Of Mantras and An Elven Marriage are really “big” (CoM in particular with 10 romances). I honestly think I’ll finish the plain VN games for sure, while those two big games, don’t know. Now you see why I am not making them anymore – doing a game like that takes 5-6 times the money, time and efforts, and in current market they aren’t rewarding enough. But since I started them, I’m going to finish them, and I hope that maybe I’ll pick a winning ticket at the Steam lottery this time! 🙂
Also, since I’m going to start making smaller games at the same time as the bigger ones, it means that in the next years I should manage to have a more consistent release schedule, and this means I’ll probably focus on a couple of niches. One for sure it’s yuri, for a lot of reasons: more profitable, easier to find artists to draw females, personally I like it, etc. But I will also try to make more games for my usual public, like otomes (I checked and basically 9 games out of 10 of the one I released in past years have otome romances!).
In the end, since it’s a business, it’s the market who decides. So if you like yaoi/yuri/otome whatever, remember to support devs who do those genres, that’s the best way to encourage them to make more 🙂